Amy Hempel Livres

With her trademark compassion and wit, Hempel takes readers into the marriages, minor disasters, and moments of revelation in an uneasy America.

It is always "earthquake weather" in Amy Hempel's California, a landscape where everything can change without warning. Traditional resources—home, parents, lovers, friends, even willpower—are not dependable. And so the characters in these short, compelling stories have learned to depend on small triumphs of wit, irony, and spirit.A widow, surrounded by a small menagerie, comes to terms with her veterinarian husband's death; a young woman entertains her dying friend with trivia and reaffirms her own life; in the aftermath of an abortion, a woman compulsively knits a complete wardrobe for a friend's baby. Buffeted by rude shocks, thwarted by misconnections, the characters recognize that anything can finally become a reason to live.In a tubTonight is a favor to HollyCelia is backNashville gone to ashesSan FranciscoIn the cemetery where Al Jolson is buriedBeg, Sl Tog, Inc, Cont, RepGoingPool nightThree popes walk into a barThe man in BogotáWhen it's human instead of when it's dogWhy I'm hereBreathing JesusToday will be a quiet day

These are stories about people who make choices that seem inevitable, whose longings and misgivings evoke eternal human experience. With her trademark compassion and wit, Hempel takes readers into the marriages, minor disasters and moments of revelation in an uneasy America.

Critically acclaimed master of the short story Amy Hempel’s Tumble Home is narrated by people with skewed visions of home. Not exactly crazy, they become obsessed and irrational as their inner logic leads them astray. In the title novella, a woman living in a psychiatric halfway house writes to a man she has met only once. Proceeding in brief vignettes that link and illuminate, she recounts her peculiar life with the other patients. The accretions of anecdote lead deeper and deeper into the psyche and history of the narrator, gradually revealing the reason for her urgent letter.

In this anthology, 26 writers illuminate the motivations at the heart of their creative lives in original essays that are as surprising and varied as their fiction. The contributors include Pat Conroy, Norman Mailor, Rick Moody and David Foster Wallace.

From legendary writer Amy Hempel, one of the most celebrated and original voices in American short fiction: a ravishing, sometimes heartbreaking new story collection--her first in over a decade. Amy Hempel is a master of the short story. A multiple award winner, Hempel is highly regarded among writers, reviewers, and readers of contemporary fiction. This new collection, her first since her Collected Stories published more than a decade ago, is a literary event. These fifteen exquisitely honed stories reveal Hempel at her most compassionate and spirited, as she introduces characters, lonely and adrift, searching for connection. In "A Full-Service Shelter," a volunteer at a dog shelter tirelessly, devotedly cares for dogs on a list to be euthanized. In "Greed," a spurned wife examines her husband's affair with a glamorous, older married woman. And in "Cloudland," the longest story in the collection, a woman reckons with the choice she made as a teenager to give up her newborn infant. Quietly dazzling, these stories are replete with moments of revelation and transcendence and with Hempel's singular, startling, inimitable sentences.

Now in paperback, an irresistible gift for dog poems from the dogs' point of view, written by the well known writers and poets who love them.List of Edward Albee, Jennifer Allen, Danny Anderson, Lynda Barry, Rick Bass, Charles Baxter, Robert Benson, Roy Blount, Jr., Ron Carlson, Jill Ciment, Bernard Cooper, Stephen Dobyns, Mark Doty, Stephen Dunn, Anderson Ferrell, Amy Gerstler, Matthew Graham, Ron Hansen, Brooks Haxton, Cynthia Heimel, Amy Hempel, Noy Hollan, Andrew Hudgins, John Irving, Denis Johnson, R.S. Jones, Walter Kirn, Sheila Kohler, Maxine Kumin, Natalie Kusz, Anne Lamott, Gordon Lish, Ralph Lombreglia, Merrill Markoe, Pearson Marx, Erin McGraw, Heather McHugh, Arthur Miller, George Minot, Susan Minot, Honor Moore, Mary Morris, Alicia Muñoz, Elise Paschen, Padgett Powell, Wyatt Prunty, Lawrence Raab, Mark Richard, John Rybicki, Jeanne Schinto, Bob Shacochis, Jim Shepard, Karen Shepard, Lee Smith, Ben Sonnenberg, Kate Clark Spencer, Gerald Stern,Terese Svoboda, William Tester, Abigail Thomas, Lily Tuck, Sidney Wade, Kathryn Walker, William Wegman

Amy Hempel gilt in Deutschland als eine der großen unentdeckten Stimmen der amerikanischen Literatur. Ihre vier schmalen Bände, die in den letzten 30 Jahren erschienen sind, haben in den USA und Europa bereits den Status moderner Klassiker erreicht. Ihre minimalistischen Geschichten sind Kleinode, die den Leser in eine veränderte Perspektive eintauchen lassen. Sie bieten scharfsichtige Portraits scheinbarer Nichtigkeiten und behandeln zentrale Themen wie den Tod, die Angst vor menschlichen Bindungen und die Unsicherheiten, mit denen ihre Figuren konfrontiert sind. Diese Geschichten entfalten ihren Sog bereits im ersten Satz, sind unheimlich und originell, und jede hinterlässt einen bleibenden Eindruck im Kopf des Lesers. Hempel, geboren 1951, lebt in New York City und lehrt Creative Writing an Harvard. Ihre veröffentlichten Kurzgeschichtenbände umfassen unter anderem "Reasons to Live" und "The Dog of the Marriage". Ihre Werke sind in renommierten Publikationen erschienen und in bedeutenden Anthologien vertreten. Sie erhielt zahlreiche Auszeichnungen, darunter den PEN/Malamud Award und den REA Award for the Short Story. Kritiker loben ihre Texte als lebendig und komisch, wobei sie die Leser zur Reflexion anregen.